You Don’t Say?

I opined earlier this week about various potential catastrophic events that could prove to be the undoing of the world or large portions of it, whether by a lack of bugs or education-related financial collapse.   Neither of which was on the horizon as I was growing up under the shadow of imminent nuclear annihilation.  The Doomsday Clock is a visual reminder of the potential horror we still live with, but which time and the passage of landmark arms limitation treaties and reductions in nuclear arsenals slightly quelled.  Those achievements actually moved the clock back significantly, both from where it started in 1947 and where it nearly struck midnight in the 1980’s.

Incidentally, we’re back to two minutes before midnight on the clock, just like we were in 1953.

So withdrawing from a decades-old agreement signed by President Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987 just sounds foolish, doesn’t it?  Surely our President has, once again, gone mad!  Or remained mad.

Maybe not.

It’s fairly common knowledge that the Soviets and the Russians have failed to keep the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.  The main effect of this seems to be that the Russians have felt free to work on new weaponry while the US – in honoring the treaty – has not.  Pulling out of the treaty with international understanding that it is Russia who has not honored it and therefore rendered it moot might be a good reminder to folks that the Cold War isn’t necessarily over, and nuclear weapons are still here and likely to stick around long past our lifetimes.

Unless someone presses some  buttons and accelerates the end of our lifetimes considerably.

Nothing much changes, folks.  While it’s comforting to think that we’ve progressed past barbarity and distrust and dishonesty and spies and assassinations and all the other hallmarks of a long and difficult history as a species, we haven’t.  This requires wisdom to navigate the safest course we can through our sinful condition, and we need to recognize that not everyone honors the principles and ideals that we find so soothing and wise.

While it’s sad to see something that was a big deal at the time discarded, it’s sadder to know that it was never really the big deal we all hoped it would be.  Back to the drawing board, and prayers that maybe next time it will work a little better.